TG Cremer,John. An eminent scholar who for over thirty years studied Hermetic philosophy in pursuance of its practical secrets, while he was at the same time Abbot of Westminster. While on a voyage to Italy, he met the famous Raymond Lully whom he induced to return with him to England. Lully divulged to Cremer the secrets of the stone, for which service the monastery offered daily prayers for him. Cremer, says the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, "having obtained a profound knowledge of the secrets of Alchemy, became a most celebrated and learned adept in occult philosophy lived to a good old age, and died in the reign of King Edward III."

TG Crescent.Sin was the Assyrian name for the moon, and Sin-ai the Mount, the birth-place of Osiris, of Dionysos, Bacchus and several other gods. According to Rawlinson, the moon was held in higher esteem than the sun at Babylon, because darkness preceded light. The crescent was, therefore, a sacred symbol with almost every nation, before it became the standard of the Turks. Says the author of Egyptian Belief, "The crescent . . . . . . is not essentially a Mahometan ensign. On the contrary, it was a Christian one, derived through Asia from the Babylonian Astarte, Queen of Heaven, or from the Egyptian Isis . . . . whose emblem was the crescent. The Greek Christian Empire of Constantinople held it as their palladium Upon the conquest of the Turks, the Mahometan Sultan adopted it for the symbol of his power. Since that time the crescent has been made to oppose the idea of the cross."

TG Criocephale(Gr.). Ram-headed, applied to several deities and emblematic figures, notably those of ancient Egypt, which were designed about the period when the Sun passed, at the Vernal Equinox, from the sign Taurus to the sign Aries. Previously to this period, bull-headed and horned deities prevailed. Apis was the type of the Bull deity, Ammon that of the ram-headed type: Isis, too, had a Cow's head allotted to her. Porphyry writes that the Greeks united the Ram to Jupiter and the Bull to Bacchus. [W.W.W.]

TG Crocodile. "The great reptile of Typhon." The seat of its worship "was Crocodilopolis and it was sacred to Set and Sebak -- its alleged creators. The primitive Rishis in India, the Manus, and Sons of Brahma, are each the progenitors of some animal species, of which he is the alleged "father"; in Egypt, each god was credited with the formation or creation of certain animals which were sacred to him. Crocodiles must have been numerous in Egypt during the early dynasties, if one has to judge by the almost incalculable number of their mummies. Thousands upon thousands have been excavated from the grottoes of Moabdeh, and many a vast necropolis of that Typhonic animal is still left untouched. But the Crocodile was only worshipped where his god and "father" received honours. Typhon (q.v.) had once received such honours and, as Bunsen shows, had been considered a great god. His words are, "Down to the time of Ramses B.C. 1300, Typhon was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god who pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt." As explained elsewhere, Typhon is the material aspect of Osiris. When Typhon, the Quaternary, kills Osiris, the triad or divine Light, and cuts it metaphorically into 14 pieces, and separates himself from the "god", he incurs the execration of the masses; he becomes the evil god, the storm and hurricane god, the burning sand of the Desert, the constant enemy of the Nile, and the "slayer of the evening beneficent dew", because Osiris s the ideal Universe, Siva the great Regenerative Force, and Typhon the material portion of it, the evil side of the god, or the Destroying Siva. This is why the crocodile is also partly venerated and partly execrated. The appearance of the crocodile in the Desert, far from the water, prognosticated the happy event of the coming inundation -- hence its adoration at Thebes and Ombos. But he destroyed thousands of human and animal beings yearly -- hence also the hatred and persecution of the Crocodile at Elephantine and Tentyra.

TG Cross. Mariette Bey has shown its antiquity in Egypt by proving that in all the primitive sepulchres "the plan of the chamber has the form of a cross'. It is the symbol of the Brotherhood of races and men; and was laid on the breast of the corpses in Egypt, as it is now placed on the corpses of deceased Christians, and, in its Swastica form (croixcramponnee), on the hearts of the Buddhist adepts and Buddhas. (See "Calvary Cross".)

ancient American I 322
brazen serpent & I 364 &n
central point in II 556
of King Ai II 558
mystical meaning of II 560-2
nailing to cross II 558, 561
no Christian, before seventh century II 586-7
Skinner on II 559-60
three "Maries" at I 385
on Tree of Life II 560

TG Crux Ansata(Lat.). The handled cross, [[symbol shaped like a T sans serif with equal length lines]]; whereas the tau is T [[same as last description]], in this form, and the oldest Egyptian cross or the tat is thus +. The crux ansata was the symbol of immortality, but the tat-cross was that of spirit-matter and had the significance of a sexual emblem. The crux ansata was the foremost symbol in the Egyptian Masonry instituted by Count Cagliostro; and Masons just have indeed forgotten the primitive significance of their highest symbols, if some of their authorities still insist that the crux ansata is only a combination of the cteis (oryoni) and phallus (or lingham). Far from this. The handle or ansa had a double significance, but never a phallic one; as an attribute of Isis it was the mundane circle; as a symbol of law on the breast of a mummy it was that of immortality, of an endless and beginningless eternity, that which descends upon and grows out of the plane of material nature, the horizontal feminine line, surmounting the vertical male line -- the fructifying male principle in nature or spirit. Without the handle the crux ansata became the tau T [[same as last description]], which, left by itself, is an androgyne symbol, and becomes purely phallic or sexual only when it takes the shape +.

TG Crypt(Gr.). A secret subterranean vault, some for the purpose of initiation, others for burial purposes. There were crypts under every temple in antiquity. There was one on the Mount of Olives, lined with red stucco, and built before the advent of the Jews.

become comets I 206
cosmic matter or, & Fohat I 673
in ocean of space I 97, 250
origin of I 69
radiant, in space I 66, 67, 97, 543
Sea of, or Milky Way I 66-7; II 321
seeds of future worlds I 69
stage in globe evolution I 205-6n

TG Curetes. The Priest-Initiates of ancient Crete, in the service of Cybele. Initiation in their temples was very severe; it lasted twenty-seven days, during which time the aspirant was left by himself in a crypt, undergoing terrible trials. Pythagoras was initiated into these rites and came out victorious.

TG Cutha. An ancient city in Babylonia after which a tablet giving an account of "creation" is named. The "Cutha tablet" speaks of a "temple of Sittam", in the sanctuary of Nergal, the "giant king of war, lord of the city of Cutha", and is purely esoteric. It has to be read symbolically, if at all.

For a fuller description of this topic by articles, excerpts, and possibly further links; hyperlink to the Cycles section of this site.

TG Cycle. From the Greek kuklos. The ancients divided time into endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or the end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle, referring to the ethnological change of races, lasting 120,000 years, and the cycle of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods -- a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

KT Cycle (Gr.) KUKLOS. The ancients divided time into endless cycles, wheels within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking the beginning or end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical or metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense duration, the great Orphic cycle referring to the ethnological change of races lasting 120,000 years, and that of Cassandrus of 136,000, which brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their correlations between men and gods -- a fact entirely lost sight of by modern astrologers.

WGa Cycle, a ring or turn, from the Greek Kuklos;more properly a spiral; a day and night are a cycle; a year is another. The returning again of any time or any impression. The subject of cycles is of the greatest importance, as it includes all history and all evolution. The best known large cycle is the sidereal,a little over 25,000 years.

OG Cycles or Law of Cycles -- An exceedingly interesting branch of theosophical study, and one dealing with a fact which is so obviously manifest in the worlds surrounding us that its existence can hardly be denied, except by the willfully blind, is what may be called the law of cycles, or nature's repetitive operations.

We find nature repeating herself everywhere, although such repetition of course is not merely a running in the same old ruts on each recurrence of the cyclic activity; for each recurrence is of course the expression of a modification, more or less great, of what has preceded. Day succeeds night, winter succeeds summer, the planets circulate around the suns in regular and periodical courses; and these are but familiar examples of cyclical activity.

Cycles in nature show the time periods of periodic recurrence along and in which any evolving entity or thing expresses the energies and powers which are itself, so that cycles and evolution are like the two sides of a coin: the one shows the time periods or cycles, and the other side manifests the energic or substantial qualities appearing in manifestation according to these cyclical time-periods; but back of this apparently double but actually single process always lie profound karmic causes.

TG Cynocephalus(Gr.). The Egyptian Hapi. There was a notable difference between the ape-headed gods and the "Cynocephalus" (Simia hamadryas), a dog-headed baboon from upper Egypt. The latter, whose sacred city was Hermopolis, was sacred to the lunar deities and Thoth-Hermes, hence an emblem of secret wisdom-as was Hanuman, the monkey-god of India, and later, the elephant-headed Ganesha. The mission of the Cynocephalus was to show the way for the Dead to the Seat of Judgment and Osiris, whereas the ape-gods were all phallic. They are almost invariably found in a crouching posture, holding on one hand the outa (the eye of Horus), and in the other the sexual cross. Isis is seen sometimes riding on an ape, to designate the fall of divine nature into generation.